Brooklyn's Progress
December 2007/January 2008

BY JILL D’AMICO

On Oct. 16, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s Real Estate & Development Committee held a Brooklyn Hotel Panel to discuss the increase in the number of hotels popping up in the borough – almost 3,000 in Downtown Brooklyn alone.

Brooklyn had never seen the building boom for hotels as it is now. The New York Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge, the first of the large hotel chains in the borough, recently expanded to add 280 rooms and additional retail space. It will soon be joined by a Sheraton, a Hyatt, and a Holiday Inn.

Brooklyn also boasts a fair amount of small bed-and-breakfasts throughout, which filled the gap when there was no marquee hotel draw. After years of careful cultivation and a loyal clientele, many of these small inns, such as the Akwaaba Mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bed & Breakfast on the Park in Park Slope, are successful and welcome the growing number of tourists to the borough.

Paula Monroe, owner and proprietress of the Strange Dog Inn, located near Brooklyn College, has been welcoming guests into her home since 1998, and has seen Brooklyn’s cachet grow in tandem.

“Development is certainly going to bring more people to the borough,” she said. “I never thought that the Queen Mary would bring us business, but it does. We have people from the ship coming to stay with us.”

Ms. Monroe doesn’t think the hotel development in the borough will cut into her profits.

“Because we are a small operation and most of our people come to us by word of mouth, we already have more people than we can handle. I think the development will be good for big businesses with large budgets that want to put up groups.”

The Tourism Factor
That Brooklyn’s status as a destination for the well read and urbane has been developing in recent years is nothing new. As the borough’s economic health prospered, more and more people in town for a visit began to cross over the East River and learn about Brooklyn’s many offerings.
One of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s top priorities has always been to keep them coming, spurring a need for hotel development.

“It’s good for Brooklyn to see more and more business coming and more hotels to open up,” said Sean McGrath, sales manager of the Holiday Inn Express in Gowanus, which opened in 2006. “It’s always a good thing when the economy and business come together to revitalize and area.”

“You get to see how it’s becoming such a flourishing area. It’s a credit to the Chamber, it’s a credit to the Borough President, and to the city of New York.”

Carolyn Greer, director of Public Events, Special Projects & Tourism for Borough President Markowitz, testified at a New York City Council hearing on Oct. 18. She argued, “Each borough would benefit from having its own funded tourism budget to sustain borough destination marketing."

“For instance, Brooklyn Tourism worked with the Heart of Brooklyn Cultural Partnership and developed the “Brooklyn Pass” – a tourism product that packages cultural attractions together and allows tourists to pay-one-price to visit all of them over two days,” she said, “We developed this product to incentivize tourists to get off their double-decker sightseeing buses and spend their money in our communities.”

Robert Gaeta, who spoke at the Brooklyn Chamber panel, recently threw the doors open at two new boutique hotels in trendy Williamsburg and Park Slope.

Hotel Le Blue and Hotel Le Jolie are doing good, reported Mr. Gaeta. “So far so well, we’ve had sell outs, and business is picking up even without a restaurant open yet.”

For international tourists, “Brooklyn is an undiscovered gem.”

“Internationally, there is a curiosity about the restaurant scene and the culture here,” said Mr. Gaeta. “We’ve had tourists from Mexico, England and Italy. This hotel boom is good for everybody. It’s a win-win for the whole borough.”

For more information on the Real Estate and Development program, call Cheryl Gladstone at 718-246-5219 x2026 or e-mail her at cgladstone@brooklynchamber.com.